THE GERMINAL IDEA
Germinal idea distinguished from title, subject, theme, motive, purpose. Defined. May be: Incident; Situation; Impression of character, of setting; Mood; Title; Abstract truth. Its sources are experience and reading. Idea should be tested for its story possibilities. Resulting story should not be trivial, not trite, not polemic. Novelty valuable. Purpose of story to be considered, also single impression MORE or less indefiniteness frequently attaches to the term germinal idea. It is made synonymous with motive, theme, purpose; with the subject of a story; and since subject is loosely used, it may even be confused with title. It is regarded as almost an abbreviated plot; in short, as the kernel of the story. It is true that the germinal idea may take any of these forms; that it may suggest them or develop into them. Yet theme, motive, subject, title, purpose, are not synonymous, either with each other or with germinal idea. To clear up this vagueness it may be well to explain each of these terms by illustration in a single story. The story is briefly as follows: Four outcasts, among whom as leader is a well known gambler, on their way from one village to another are held for a week snowbound on a mountain on which they had unnecessarily stopped to rest. They all meet death before help reaches them. The title of this story is The Outcasts of Poker Flat; the subject, how four outcasts met their death in a mountain snow-storm. The purpose is to show the essential soundness of heart which may coexist with outward, conventional badness. The theme is the acceptance of chance as a controlling motive. Motive is that which controls the individual actor. The Duchess had a motive in halting the journey; Oakhurst had a motive for wishing the continuance of the journey; Uncle Billy had a motive for departing with the mules; Mother Shipton had a motive in refusing to eat her share of the provisions. The germinal idea may have been one of several things; perhaps an incident, perhaps an impression of the wild lawlessness of a California mining camp, or of the calculating nature of John Oakhurst. The difference between these terms is, perhaps, now obvious. The title is the name by which a story is distinguished. The subject is the statement, in narrative terms, of what the story is about. The purpose is the writer's object in telling a particular. story. The theme is the basic fact upon which the plot of the story hinges. Motive, sometimes the borrowed musical term motif, is commonly used as the equivalent of theme. Yet motive in this sense is misleading, for it is applied as well to the unseen spring of action for an individual. Motive is that which leads a certain person to act in a certain way under certain given circumstances. Yet the so-called motive of a story involves an interplay of motives of the characters. Thus title and subject, purpose, theme, and motive, though allied, are essentially distinct. The germinal idea is, however, none of these. It is the bare, undeveloped idea from which the imagination receives its original thrill. It is essentially the starting-point of a story. It is not the beginning of the actual plotting any more than it is of the actual writing. It is that which first awakens the consciousness of a writer to a possible story. It is a mere suggestion from which a story may in time grow. One cannot be sure that a germinal idea will ever be fruitful. Occasionally, it may be utilized at once; frequently it will be dormant in the mind for weeks and then suddenly become active; sometimes it must be coaxed into activity by long reflection. Rarely does the germinal idea reveal just what sort of story may result, since it is but seldom that a whole story presents itself at once. The germinal idea may or may not be presented along with certain features of its development. It-is indefinite in quantity; perhaps a word, possibly a whole plot. Sometimes, too, it may prove mistaken seed, —very good, perhaps, for an essay or a sketch, but unavailable for a Short-story. Not every germinal idea has its Short-story, but every Short-story has its germinal idea. For such productive idea, search must be painstakingly kept up. In this chapter, then, we shall try to treat of the germinal idea in its variety and sources, and of the principles which will govern its possible growth toward plot. The beginner's first question is always, What shall I write about? It is, indeed, a vexing question. Seated comfortably in his chair, he stares for an hour blankly at ceiling and side-wall and carpet; then turns to gaze distractedly out of the window into the tree-tops. Or a maiden wistfully watches a sunset and expects something astounding or beautiful to flash across her mind, —a well-developed story idea. It is little wonder that these amateurs grumble, for they have failed to look understandingly. Beside the one, there may lie, spread out on the floor, a daily newspaper, and on the front of it there may be a cartoon with the picture of a man pleading for re-election, and against all charges of indiscretion and unfitness urging simply, "I want to die in the harness. " The girl, too, failed to catch the scrap of conversation of two women who passed the window, and she did not notice the pained expression on the face of the delivery man as -he hurried around the house. There is no repository in ceiling or carpet, in sunset or tree-tops, from which the aspiring young Short-story writer may draw at will. He may not scrutinize a catalog and then order C. O. D. ten pounds of Early Grand Success Short story seeds. These seeds are free to him who seeks them with open eyes and zealous carefulness, for they are scattered all about him. If, then, the writer will train himself in thoughtfulness and observation, he will soon have story-germs of all kinds. An incident, an imagined situation, a statement of abstract truth, some title, some passing impression, — anyone of these may serve as a germinal idea. Although the usual method of finding story-germs may vary for different people, perhaps the most frequent story-germ for all people alike is incident. It appeals because ft is already narrative. To imagine its story possibilities is generally easier than to see possibilities in something which, does not of itself make a narrative appeal. This incident may be some personal experience or the experience of a friend; it may be actual fact; it may be an imagined occurrence; it may be a suggestive historical event or incident — such as the hanging of a spy during the Civil War, or the quelling of a riot on a city street. Situations real or imagined, too, are frequently story-germs. These situations may be simply expressed fnthe abstract with the character a man, a woman, a child; or they may regard some definite person under certain definite circumstances. Hawthorne used both sorts, yet usually his situations were indefinite. A few chosen from hisAmerican Note-Books will serve as examples: "An old looking-glass. Somebody finds out the secret of making all the images that have been reflected in it pass back again to its surface. " "A partially insane man to believe himself the Provincial Governor or other great official of Massachusetts. The scene might be the Province House. " "A company of persons to drink a certain medicinal preparation, which would prove a poison or the contrary according to their different characters. " "Some man of powerful character to command a person, morally subjected to him, to perform some act. The commanding person suddenly to die; and for all the rest of his life, the subjected one continues to perform that act. " "A father confessor — his reflections on character, and the contrast of the inward man with the outward, as he looks around on his congregation, all whose secret sins are known to him. " "A person to be the death of his beloved in trying to raise her to more than mortal perfection; yet this should be a comfort to him for having aimed so highly and holily. " In this situation, one recognizes the finished story, The Birthmark. "Two persons to be expecting some occurrence, and watching for the two principal actors in it, and to find that the occurrence is even then passing, and that they themselves are the two actors. " "Two persons, by mutual agreement, to make their wills in each other's favor, then to wait impatiently for one another's death, and both to be informed of the desired event at the same time. Both, in most joyous sorrow, hasten to be present at the funeral, meet, and find themselves hoaxed. " "A change from a gay young girl to an old woman; the melancholy events, the effects of which have clustered around her character, and gradually imbued it with their influence till she becomes a lover of sick-chambers, taking pleasure in receiving dying breaths and in laying out the dead; also having her mind full of funeral reminiscences, and possessing more acquaintances beneath the burial turf than above it. " Hawthorne's story situations were of the morbid and the fanciful. In that respect they are not good examples for the beginner, who would almost surely make a failure of them. Yet they serve to show how slight may be the germinal idea upon which a story may be 'constructed. To develop a story based upon a bare situation requires a strong creative imagination. Simple impressions, likewise, of character, of action, or of setting may be germinal ideas. So definitely does character write itself in one's appearance that a face may stir one's narrative imagination. A kindly open face may suggest one thing; a pinched, pale, but kindly face another; and a dark, lowering countenance and restless eyes, yet another. Each one of us, however young and inexperienced, has seen some faces, perhaps in the waiting-room of a railroad station, which have remained distinctly in memory and have more than once challenged the imagination. Perhaps it may have been the face of a nun, or of a tavern keeper, of a peddler, or of a woman whose eyes had gazed so long upon a forest lake that they seemed to reflect its blueness and its dancing wildness. A person's mannerisms, his mode of dressing, his carriage might all suggest stories. For instance, a student who walked with head erect and eyes always directed ahead, whose feet seemed always to be placed precisely on the same two rows of bricks on the walk, who always turned corners sharply, might suggest to his associates a person who could scarcely cope with any great change. Imagine that person then facing some decided change and a story would result. Watch a person's dealings with a clerk in a store, notice passing remarks, and one will often gain vivid impressions of character which may be fruitful for stories. "A face seen in a crowd, gossip overheard in a tavern, a conversation at a street door, the revelations of hostile eyes in meeting or parting, the sudden passing of insignificant men and women across the beam of his questing searchlight — these are enough to excite his imagination, to start the wheels of fantasy; and if he will but continue to see vividly the dramatic possibilities of life, and to report truthfully what he sees, he need never lack material for the warp and woof of the stories he can spin. " An impression may be of setting. The setting itself might be of use in a story, but it might simply create an impression. A large hotel set in beautiful grounds at a summer resort is deserted. Stacks of dishes stand on the tables, doors are ajar, beds are thrown open, but left unmade, a bottle of whiskey, half-used, stands in a cupboard, dishes of dried-up ice-cream are left on stands in the hallways, the registry book lies on the desk, the window-shades are not drawn. This setting might or might not be used in a story, but undoubtedly it stirs one's imagination. Instinctively one asks, What happened here? On the other hand, Stevenson was impressed by the wildness of the sea and rocks in Sandag Bay; from the impression he created The Merry Men. 1W. J. Dawson (1909), North American Review, 190: p. 805. The setting became a vital part of his story, not just a stimulation to the imagination. ' In A Gossip on Romance, Stevenson has said: "One thing in life calls for another; there is a fitness in events and places. The sight of a pleasant arbour puts it in our mind to sit there. One place suggests work, another idleness, a third early rising and long rambles in the dew. The effect of night, of any flowing water, of lighted cities, of the peep of day, of ships, of the open ocean, calls up in the mind an army of anonymous desires and pleasures. Something, we feel, should happen; we know not what, yet we proceed in quest of it. And many of the happiest hours of life fleet by us in this vain attendance on the genius of the place and moment. . . . Some places speak distinctly. Certain dank gardens cry aloud for a murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set apart for shipwreck. Other spots again seem to abide their destiny, suggestive and impenetrable, `miching mallecho. ' The inn at Burford Bridge with its arbors and green garden and silent, eddying river . . . still seems to wait the coming of the appropriate legend. Without these ivied walls, behind these old green shutters some further business smoulders, waiting for its hour. The old Hawes Inn at the Queen's Ferry makes a similar call upon my fancy. Hawthorne realized clearly the value of setting as a germinal idea. Here again is one of his notes: "The scene of a story or sketch to be laid within the light of a street lantern; the time, when the lamp is near going out; and the catastrophe to be simultaneous with the last flickering gleam. " So it is with names and faces; so it is with incidents that are idle and inconclusive in themselves, and yet seem like the beginning of some quaint romance, which the all-careless author leaves untold. How many of these romances have we not seen determine at their birth; how many people have met us with a look of meaning in their eye, and sunk at once into trivial acquaintances; to how many places have we not drawn near, with express intimations —'here my destiny awaits me' — and we have but dined there and passed on! I have lived both at the Hawes and Burford in a perpetual flutter, on the heels, as it seemed, of some adventure that should justify the place; but though the feeling led me to bed at night and called me again at morning in one unbroken round of pleasure and suspense, nothing befell me in either worth remark. The man of the hour had not yet come; but some day, I think, a boat shall put off from the Queen's Ferry, fraught with a dear cargo, and some frosty night a horseman, on a tragic errand, rattle with his whip upon the green shutters of the inn at Burford. " Again, the germinal idea may be a mood, a passing fancy, a contrast of some kind, an illustration, even a name appropriate to a main character. A title may come to one with suggestive force and demand for itself a fitting story, for, as we shall see later, ' every title should be to a certain degree suggestive of the story it heads. To some minds, the For the full discussion of title see chapter VI. title is frequently the story-germ; others make it even the last touch in the building of a story. The bare statement of a truth; a proverb; perhaps, a moral; the theme, which is the very heart of a story, may at times appear as germinal ideas. These occur, however, not at all frequently, and with good reason; for a truth or proverb is a summation of experience, not an inspiration to experience. It may enforce by causing reflection, but it rarely stirs the imagination creatively. A proverb would have to be analyzed into its facts before it could begin to take shape as a story. To use it as a germinal idea seems a little like the process of pulling an alarm-clock to pieces for the sheer joy of putting it together again. Yet to some, even these abstractions might prove valuable — particularly to those whose aim is to teach a lesson or point a moral. Experience and reading are the two great sources of material. Under experience, one should include not only that which is actual and personal, but that which is observed. If one is to write, one must see. It is true here as elsewhere that "familiarity breeds contempt. " One is generally on the lookout for the striking and interesting away from home. Diaries are full of such records. Yet rarely does one notice the things that are easily under one's eye. Their nearness seems commonly to presuppose insignificance. The Short-story writer, nevertheless, "gets his material from nature and human life, " 1which are just as true and interesting in the spot where he lives, in the business in which he is occupied, as they would be in a cannibal-inhabited island on the far side of the world. Everywhere man is contending, whether with his fellow-man, or with nature, or with himself. One cannot always witness the struggle, but one can watch the effects, can study the motives, and note the forces gathering for the conflict. "Queer things are happening all around us, if we have eyes to see-them as queer or interesting events. " This power to see and understand may be, indeed must be, developed until the writer becomes almost a magnet for Short-story ideas. His imagination must become so sensitive that even commonplaces will set him to thinking in a narrative direction, and this can happen only when the writer moves in the midst of life and responds sympathetically to life's emotions. He must be in tune. "In the very beginning of his work, then, the story-writer must lay his senses open to the world about him. He must observe the speech and actions of his fellowmen, study their expressions, reflect upon their character, sympathetically interpret motives, leaping over the bridge of personality and making common cause with other people's feelings. And eventually he must be able to reproduce on the stage of his own mind something of that wonderful interaction by which we human beings are woven and interwoven into the complex web of humanity. "2"All the earth is full of tales to hiin who listens and does not drive away the poor from his door. The poor are the best of tale-tellers; for they must lay their ear to the ground every night. " 1 Much of one's personal experience, also, is rich as a seed-plot of germinal ideas. Experience, be it crucial -or trivial, is interesting, — at least, to the person who has had it. One has real emotions with which to deal, undoubted motives, actual events . whose causes may be definitely traced. An incident itself may be inspiration enough. Much, however, of one's daily experience becomes suggestive through reflection. Every day we are all turning over in our minds incident after incident. We change here a cause, there a motive; the outcome is different. Suddenly one starts in astonishment; for there, perhaps, is a story one had never suspected. Thus even the details may become significant for material. Even a dream, if vivid and remembered, may contain a germinal idea. Suppose a person be required to serve a jail sentence in three-hour periods, one period each day. It iseasy to see ho-w, if the sentence be long, the suffering of the man enduring it might be acute. This situation is, of course, extremely improbable. It is but a dream situation, yet it might have narrative possibilities. Everyone has some small store, at least, of vivid and valuable story material within his own experience. One need not be a restless globetrotter, nor busied with many interests, to gain such material. The man who spends all his years in his native village, the workman who day after day guides an electric gimlet in a factory, may also find in actual life the germs of possible stories. One need not depend entirely upon experience, observed or personal, so long as one can read. The sciences, as physics, chemistry, geology, psychology, mechanics, amorich in suggestions for stories of strange and 'unusual phenomena. History, especially biography, ought to be valuable as source material. Take in one life all the undeveloped situations — those which never reached any definite result; take the developed situations and realize their possibilities in other lives under utterly different circumstances, and one should reap a harvest of story material. Better than all of these, however, for the hunting of ideas, is the daily newspaper. Its supply is exhaustless. There, one may find an actual incident such as may be in itself useful, an incident which may suggest a situation. Headlines, cartoons, even want advertisements or "lost" notices may be enough to start ideas. From the first page to the last, at the bottom of a page or at the top, in fine print or in bold type — anywhere, except perhaps in real-estate and insurance notes, the obituary columns and marriage-license department, or in the stock exchange and market quotings, germinal ideas may be hidden. Equipped with a newspaper, even a local newspaper, a notebook, and an imagination, one should not suffer for lack of story-ideas. To gather story-ideas is one thing; to develop a story from a bare idea is quite another. From among the many ideas that present themselves, one must be chosen. This one may have several manifestations; from it, several different stories might result. One must first test the germinal idea for its possible manifestations and then choose that one which will make the most worthy story. One must ask whether the story might bexclusively of action, of character, or setting; wheTherail might allow development into a character story, an action story, a setting story; whether it might be a psychological story, a problem story, a story of symbolism. If the germinal idea is a character hint, one should decide what sort of character is to be represented. Could any other sort be suggested by this idea? In what ways would the character be revealed? In what different circumstances might he be placed? Are any of these circumstances essentially dramatic; that is, will they yield a plot? Should the germinal idea be an incident, one should ask a different set of questions. Is this incident the basis of an action story? Is it significant of anything? Is it dramatic? Could it serve as the main incident of a story? Is it perhaps a minor incident of some other story? If so, of what kind of story? What sort of characters would be necessary? Could it be a character story or a story of setting? Thus, whatever the idea, its possible manifestations must be tested before one can conclude what is the one best way of telling the story. A germinal idea capable of several different story manifestations might, notwithstanding, fail to result in a worthy Short-story. H. G. Wells has said that a Short-story may be "as trivial as a Japanese print of insects seen closely between grass stems or as spacious as the prospect of the plain of Italy from Monte Mottarone. " The germinal idea may be trivial. "Yet the Short-story has been raised into literature only in those fortunate times when skill, or the circumstances of the moment, have given its slight fabric a serious purpose, a worthy substance, or consummate art. It can be light, it can be graceful, it can be amusing, it can be airy. But triviality kills it. " 1In other words, one must have for one's story a telling theme, — such a theme as bears closely on some deep-rooted fact of human nature. Without this theme a story might be perfect technically, yet fail to "capture the mind of the reader" or "make his heart really throb with anxiety about the result. " 2 "The peculiar note of the Short-story at its best is the importance of the individual soul, be the surroundings of the humblest, or the most sordid. It is the heroism, the futility, the humor, the pathos, the inherent worth and beauty of life in the narrowest circumstances, that are the themes of the great writers of the Short story. " 3Even though a story may be possessed of the glamor of the Orient, and interest through its novelty, it must reflect the sadness and the gladness, the hopelessness and optimism of human endeavor, if it would live in the hearts of men. It must not be unimportant. The Short story is limited in another way: it must be new and striking, or no one would ever care to read it. The first aim of a magazine article is to instruct; that of the Short-story is to entertain. It may be based on an old theme, but it must be told in a new way. People are easily bored; they do not care to hear the same thing over and over again without variation. "Hackneyed subjects now and then are treated in so original a manner as to bring the whole story above the commonplace level, but that is a performance too unusual for even a genius to dally with often. Editors and public tired long ago of the poor boy whose industry at last brought him the hand of his employer's daughter; the pale-faced, sweet-eyed young thing whose heroism in stamping out the fire enabled her to pay off the mortgage; the recovery of the missing will; the cruel stepmother; answering a prayer which has been overheard; the strange case of mistaken identity; honesty rewarded; a noble revenge; a child's influence; and so on to a long-drawn-out end. " ' A Short story must make one think. A hackneyed subject follows the already deep groove in one's brain. It cuts no new track. One's fingers playing the scale of C for the one hundredth time 1J. B. Esenwein, Writing the Short-story, pp. 45-6. move up the keyboard without the conscious direction of the mind. If, however, one plays the scale of D major for the first time in contrary motion, one thinks. If a story is to make an impression, it must be new and striking; it must stimulate thought. Because a theme is important and because its development must stimulate thought, there is no reason that it should stir up dispute. Argumentation has no part in a story. It may convince the reason; of itself it will never convince the feeling. Furthermore, as Mr. Pitkin says: "Do not attempt to interpret any matter which society finds problematic to-day. If the human race has not yet found a clear answer to a question of social consequence, it is because the question is entangled and dark, or, at least, two-sided. And whatever is so cannot be presented in such a manner as to produce that single effect which is the inalienable charm and right of the Short-story. " 1One might relate a dramatic war incident; one should hesitate, however, to attempt to prove in a Short-story that war should be eliminated. One might tell of the appearance of a mouse on the platform during a womansuffrage meeting; one should not try to show that woman-suffrage is a good or an evil. One may approach so close that the problem will be raised in the mind of the reader, but one should not enter into the problem itself. It is but little less dangerous to try to use a trite or disputed theme than it is to try to write about something concerning which one knows nothing. A girl could rarely write a successful story of politics, for usually she lacks intimate knowledge. A person who had spent his whole life in Nebraska would rarely write a successful story of an ocean voyage. Unless he had read widely, and perhaps even if he had, he would be almost sure to make absurd blunders which would betray his inexperience. No more ought an Ohioan without experience in the mountains to try to write a story of the Rockies or of Alaska. An easterner generally makes his wild west a great deal too wild. If one wishes to write a story whose plot is laid on the Sahara Desert or in Constantinople, he needs to be pretty sure that he knows his region before he begins. College students are living in a unique environment, yet ordinarily, instead of accepting the material at hand and writing of the complications of college life, they prefer to stretch their imaginations across states, if not across the length and breadth of a continent, for the sake of novelty. Kipling wrote of India, Bret Harte, of California, and we all wish to go and do likewise. Kipling, however, knew his India through intimate experience. Bret Harte knew his California. Therein is a difference. If one must write of the unfamiliar, one should read, study his chosen environment until he can live there imaginatively as easily as he can in flesh and blood at home. Then he should make the environment as colorless as possible. He may thus avoid glaring mistakes. The same principle applies to stories written with an historical background. They must be handled carefully, if at all. After all, it is easier to write of one's own country, one's own surroundings, and one's own time. The reader, however, enjoys novelty — of all sorts; novelty of treatment, novelty of character, novelty of incident, novelty of setting. It is true, of course, that underneath all this strangeness he does wish to behold the sameness of human nature at its root. It is certain that he likes to be able to say at times, "I might have done that, " or "I once had an experience something like that. " He likes to see his own motives and manners mirrored, just as he boosts his pride a little whenever the name of his forsaken hamlet is mentioned in a city paper. Yet familiarity may at length grow tiresome. We are all interested in what other people are like, what they are doing, what strange adventures they have had. We like to know what other people have done that we have never succeeded in doing, and, at times, we like, as did the Pharisee, to congratulate ourselves that we "are not as other men. " Thus the story depicting the life and manners of men and women the like of which we have never known, has a perennial interest. Kipling has said: "Tell them first of those things that thou hast seen and they have seen together. Thus their knowledge will piece out thy imperfections. Tell them of what thou alone hast seen, then what thou hast heard, and since they be children, tell them of battles and kings, horses, devils, elephants, and angels, but omit not to tell them of love and such like. " 1 Kipling, Preface to Life's Handicap. Quoted by J. B. Esenwein, Studying the Short-story, p. 148. After one has found a story which is not trivial, not hackneyed, not polemic, but is of genuine interest, one has yet to settle upon one's purpose. To have a purpose in writing a story is not the same as to point a moral. Only when theme and purpose merge so that the one is merely the expression of the other is the resulting story really didactic. For instance, in the story referred to at the opening of this chapter, The Outcasts of Poker Flat, if Bret Harte had taken as his purpose to show that the acceptance of chance as a controlling motive is sure to bring disastrous results, he would have made theme and purpose identical; his story would have been didactic. Fortunately, however, he did not do this. His theme and purpose are distinct, and a just balance is kept between them. A story may, indeed, allow several purposes, and as the purpose varies, so also will the story. Does one care simply to give a humorous presentation of life? Does the story lend itself to such treatment? Does one wish to show a contrast or to portray vividly the characteristics of one locality or business? Or, does one have a more serious purpose, to show the nobility of human nature or the baseness to which sin may lead? Of course, purpose may be determined absolutely by the nature of the story itself. If so, the writer might as well accept it, or hunt for a new story-idea. At this early stage, too, it is wise to determine, at least in a general way, upon the single impression that is to be left upon the reader, and upon the prevailing tone of the story: whether it be of gloom, expectancy, joy; of wildness or calm; of genial warmth and friendliness; of bleakness and misfortune; perhaps of miserliness. In choosing a single impression or tone, it will be necessary to take into account its acceptability to the reader and its adaptability to the theme. In the matter of acceptability, one must depend on one's good sense and general observation. Nowadays, however, joy is generally preferred to horror, and warmth of tone to coldness. By the control of adaptability is meant that the writer must always be guided by his story. He cannot work free-hangrid, for the single impression is always determined by and determines the climax. category:Sources of plot